


Defying history

by Unfeathered



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Coronavirus, Ficlet, Gen, Saving the World, Spanish flu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:08:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24336400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unfeathered/pseuds/Unfeathered
Summary: History repeats; sometimes you have to defy it, just a little
Relationships: Gwen Cooper & Jack Harkness
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	Defying history

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: this fic is set during and deals with the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic. Don't read if that's just going to make you more depressed. Sometimes it's better to just avoid the enormity of the thing altogether!
> 
> On the upside, this fic isn't graphic and does offer a ray of hope, at least in the Whoniverse. :-)

There weren't many people in 2020 who'd been alive at the time of the Spanish flu epidemic just over a century earlier. And of those who were still alive very, very few of them could actually remember it.

Jack could. Jack could remember the horror and suffering, the anguish of losing people you loved, the swathe cut through a population already broken and decimated by war.

He'd known it was coming, the plague of 2020 that would change everything, the way the whole world operated. He'd been a Time Agent, he knew his history. And he knew there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Mustn't change history, even if history is what you're living through as your present.

But he was damned if he was going to let the only people he still had on Earth suffer through it.

* * *

Gwen _knew_ , from the moment he turned up on her doorstep. There was only one reason Jack bloody Harkness would be standing there in the middle of a global pandemic, and it wasn't because he thought there was some alien behind it all that they could fight.

She was already shaking her head, mouth pursed stubbornly, before he'd said hello.

"I'm not taking no for an answer, Gwen," he said, and she winced at the roughness of fear that came through in his voice. "You, Rhys, Anwen, the younger kids, your mum, anyone else you refuse to leave behind… You're coming with me. You're getting off-world, now. I am _not_ losing you, not to this."

She argued, of course, but in the end what convinced her was the way the scared look in Rhys' eyes – the look she'd got used to in recent weeks and hated herself for it – had turned to hope. "Why not?" he said reasonably. "Why not let him save us, for once?"

So for the sake of her family, she gave in. And a couple of hours later, Jack was transporting them in shifts (his Vortex Manipulator could only manage a couple of people at a time) up to the ship that would take them to a sanctuary planet where – once the appropriate scans and quarantine and whatever were out of the way – they could wait it all out in safety.

She'd have felt worse about running away if she'd thought there was anything at all useful she could do back home, other than keeping her mum and her kids cooped up for eternity. To be honest, once she'd given in, it was like a massive great weight off her shoulders.

She still fought like hell when Jack announced he was leaving them, going back to Earth to help out in any way he could.

"I can't _die_ , Gwen!" he insisted. "Hell, I can't even _carry_ twenty-first century viruses. I didn't catch it in 1918 and I'm not going to catch it now. I'm just about the safest person there could be in this crisis. I can touch people, I can _nurse_ people, without transmitting anything, or getting sick myself. I can _help._ "

She laughed, through the tears running down her cheeks. "Jack the super-nurse. Better learn some people skills first, yeah?"

"I’ll work on it," he promised, hugging her, and snuck a quick kiss on her cheek while Rhys wasn't looking. And whispered, right in her ear, "I promise, it _will_ end. I know this, okay? It will end, and you'll go home again. I promise."

And so, regretfully, she let him go. Wondering what the world would be like when she got to go back to it.

At least, thanks to Jack, she knew there'd be a world to go back to.


End file.
